I've been too busy with my day job (I do have one, you know...) to post much lately, but plenty of ACA-related news has piled up, so I'm clearing off my desk with some quick hits:
Idaho officials say they’re tired of waiting on files from the federal government and have figured out a way to transfer the state’s 76,000 Obamacare customers from the federal marketplace to its state-run portal this fall.
Your Health Idaho said it had hoped to leverage federal information to set up existing enrollees on their own web platform.
Instead, it has asked the state’s health and welfare agency to use its eligibility system to figure out who is eligible for government subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. It will also work with insurance carriers to determine who signed up for coverage and needs an account on the state exchange, which is set to launch in time for the overhaul’s second sign-up period on Nov. 15.
I've been too busy with my day job (I do have one, you know...) to post much lately, but plenty of ACA-related news has piled up, so I'm clearing off my desk with some quick hits:
One of the big news stories in 2013 and early 2014 was the botched launch of the federal Exchange (and several key state Exchanges), which led to many Americans having to wait to be enrolled in an ACA-sanctioned health plan. Although some technical snafus have been addressed, many still remain. For example, a top White House official told Congress recently that the automated system to send payments to insurance companies is still under development, and didn't offer a completion date. The lack of an electronic verification process is only one part of the "backend" of the software that is still problematic five years after the Act was passed.
I've been too busy with my day job (I do have one, you know...) to post much lately, but plenty of ACA-related news has piled up, so I'm clearing off my desk with some quick bits:
First in a series of profiles about KY women in charge of the state exchange:
Energy exudes from Carrie Banahan when she talks about her work with others to bring affordable health care to more than half a million Kentuckians.
“I worked all my life to see this happen, that we can provide affordable health insurance to people, and it has actually happened,” she said. “I am thrilled that we are actually helping people in Kentucky. It is the highlight of my career.”
Banahan is executive director of the Kentucky Health Benefits Exchange, which the state has branded as Kynect, partly to avoid identification with the pejorative nickname Obamacare. She shares the credit for its success.
I've been too busy with my day job (I do have one, you know...) to post much lately, but plenty of ACA-related news has piled up, so I'm clearing off my desk with some quick bits:
MARYLAND: An Amazing Healthcare Revolution Is Happening In Maryland — And Almost No One's Talking About It
The Maryland ACA exchange has been one of the "middle-tier" models in my view; not an utter disaster like the ones in Oregon or Massachusetts, but still riddled with technical problems like the ones in Minnesota & Vermont. However, the state has apparently had a different healthcare-related initiative which has been a huge success so far:
Through innovative methods and a data-centric approach, Western Maryland Regional Medical Center, has become the cornerstone in Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley's ambitious makeover of the state's healthcare programs.
I've been too busy with my day job (I do have one, you know...) to post much lately, but plenty of ACA-related news has piled up, so I'm clearing off my desk with some quick bits:
ARKANSAS:
Mark Pryor shows Democrats how they should campaign on the Affordable Care Act in a red state. You don't have to mention Obamacare (which technically doesn't even exist), you don't have to even mention the Affordable Care Act. You do have to personalize what the law actually means forreal people with real medical issues which were fixed or improved by the law:
Over at the CT Mirror, Arielle Levin Becker does the same type of wonky number-crunching that I specialize in here at ACASignups.net to figure out whether the state's recent claims of the ACA slashing their uninsured rate in half (from 8% to 4%) hold water.
It gets a bit involved, but her conclusion is that yeah, it probably has been cut significantly, but a specific percent number is hart to pinpoint since there's still a lot of noise on the ESI side as well as continuous churn across the board as people move on & off of different plans.
However, it does include a few nuggets which help me update my own data. For one thing, CT's SHOP enrollment has gone up from 500 as of February to a whopping...602 people last month:
Access Health also operates an exchange for small businesses, although uptake has been low. As of mid-July, it covered 602 people.
"Republicans seeking to unseat the U.S. Senate incumbent in North Carolina have cut in half the portion of their top issue ads citing Obamacare, a sign that the party's favorite attack against Democrats is losing its punch," Bloomberg reports.
"The shift -- also taking place in competitive states such as Arkansas and Louisiana -- shows Republicans are easing off their strategy of criticizing Democrats over the Affordable Care Act now that many Americans are benefiting from the law and the measure is unlikely to be repealed."
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 364,929
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of August 18, 2014
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
Here's an educated guess as to the possible impact on Michigan's uninsured rate:
I haven't posted much the past few days, partly because of a lack of major ACA news, partly because I'm busily playing catch-up with my day job (I do have one, believe it or not), and partly because all the oxygen has been (rightly) sucked out of the news atmosphere the past week or so by the slow-motion trainwreck called "Ferguson, Missouri".
So, I was a bit surprised to see my name and this site figure heavily as a source by Megan McArdle over at BloombergView, in an article called "More Bad News for Obamacare". McArdle has decided to pick up the "Massive Attrition!!" ball which I debunked last week and run with it, citing me as a source several times (including using me as her source for the news of the HHS Dept. dropping off-season enrollment reports)...and yet completely ignoring my entire point:
on net, they expect enrollment to shrink from their March numbers by a substantial amount -- as much as 30 percent at Aetna Inc., for example.
